


I spell love T.H.I.A.M

by Khaylis



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alphabet Soup Challenge, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe- No Supernatural, Broken Families, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Protective Liam, Roommates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-31
Updated: 2018-05-31
Packaged: 2019-05-16 15:02:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14813639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Khaylis/pseuds/Khaylis
Summary: Liam and Theo meet in college. Theo is a bit damaged and has trouble relating to people, but Liam finds him fascinating and manages to befriend him. They eventually end up living together as roommates, but Liam discovers he wants to be more than just friends with his moody roommate. Too scared to admit his feelings to the guy who rejects everyone, Liam decides to be creative in the way he confesses.





	I spell love T.H.I.A.M

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LovelyLittleGrim](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LovelyLittleGrim/gifts).



> Don't really know what to say about this other than it is a prompt from LovelyLittleGrim. I hope it lives up to your expectations!

_FEEL BETTER_

“What’s this?” Theo asked with a quizzical frown as he looked up from the bowl of soup he had just been handed.

“It’s letter soup,” Liam replied, looking down at his feet self-consciously, shuffling them slightly as though he were fighting the urge to run out of the room and hide under his blanket in embarrassment. “I… My mom… I remember when I was little, my mom gave me letter soup once, and I thought it was the most amazing thing ever. I played with the letters with my spoon until they got so soft that they fell apart. I remember feeling like it was some kinda magic and that you could spell out anything you wanted and it might somehow come true.”

He looked up at last and was met by deep blue eyes, set in a slightly puffy and reddened face. Theo had been sick with flu for a couple of days, and like he always did when he got even slightly sick, he was feeling extremely sorry for himself. He was bundled up in his comforter, wearing his fluffy onesie, which had a coyote-like design over the hood.

Liam had bought them the matching onesies, and the older boy had fought him for the wolf-like one, but ultimately gave in, allowing his younger roommate to get his way. It was a bit odd how often he did that.

**3 years ago**

The two young men had met in college. Liam had come straight from high school but Theo was a bit older, having worked for a couple years to support himself before he was able to acquire financial aid for his studies. The younger man seemed to be a typical jock, always surrounded by boisterous boys and doe-eyed girls, while the older was more reticent.

Theo had never had much in the way of friends, and college was not much different. Acerbic remarks fell from his lips as readily as “dude” or “bro” fell from those of the guys surrounding Liam, but for some reason that only served to pique the younger man’s interest. Who was this dark brooding guy in his classes? Why did he always sit alone? Why did he always seem to have a snarky answer to every question someone asked him? And why the hell was he still single?

It took some time, and a lot of patience, but Liam finally managed to wheedle his way into the older guy’s life. He always sat next to him in the classes they shared and tried to start conversations before lectures, since the guy bolted the moment classes ended. Liam only later discovered that it was so he could get to his job, since his financial aid barely covered his tuition and he had no family to support him.

It then took even more time to convince the sullen young man that Liam wasn’t a stereotypical jock – that he actually had a personality and a brain, although he would be the first to admit it was nothing compared to Theo’s. The guy was so smart, quick-witted and funny, in a really dark sort of way. But eventually, he started getting to know the loner and began figuring out why he was the way he was.

He had had a rough childhood and his parents had kicked him out the moment he turned eighteen. He would never tell Liam why and the younger man never pushed the subject. But he admired how Theo had persevered and managed to support himself to the point where he could afford to go to college, and Liam, who had doting parents who paid for basically everything in his life, felt truly humbled, even though he had gotten a sports scholarship so they weren’t entirely supporting him.

And somehow, he had convinced this strong, sceptical, smart and moody guy to be his friend. More than that, he had become his best friend. And now, three years later, they were living together in an off-campus apartment, which Theo was under the impression cost half as much as it really did. And in that time, Liam had only become more enamoured with the oftentimes grumpy yet strangely thoughtful young man.

**Present**

“I guess it’s a bit silly,” the light-blue-eyed man stammered out when the stare he was receiving didn’t falter. But just as he was about to tuck tail and run, Theo cracked a smile and chuckled.

“No,” the sick young man smirked as he shook his head slightly, “I… I like it.” He scooped up the letters forming the message and dutifully gobbled up the spell before giving his roommate a red-nosed smile. “Thank you,” he added.

Liam looked down again, partly out of embarrassment but mostly to hide his blush. Even in his ridiculous onesie, with his face flushed and eyes baggy from lack of sleep, Theo still made the younger man’s pulse race. He just wished he had the courage tell him how he really felt.

That was how the tradition had begun. And from there it somehow morphed into a weird sort of messaging system.

When Liam caught the flu a week later, he was surprised to hear the knock at his door. And even more surprised that it was his roommate instead of Mason or Hayden, who usually checked up on their friend when he missed class. Theo was a bit of a germaphobe, which explains why he always got so miserable when he got sick, as though he had somehow failed some sort of test and the world was punishing him for interacting with other people.

“Hey,” the muscular young man greeted as he peered around the door to Liam’s bedroom.

“Hey,” Liam replied with a smile before rubbing at his nose with his sleeve, deciding that looking gross for doing that was preferable to looking gross for having snot running down his face. “Don’t you have class now?” he asked a bit worriedly when he looked over at his alarm clock.

“Yeah I do. I just stopped to check on you, since it is kinda my fault you’re sick,” Theo answered.

“Haha no worries man,” the younger man laughed it off. “Totally worth it,” he added quietly, before he noticed that Theo was looking at him really intensely, so he tried to mask the comment with a coughing fit, which became real all too fast. He was surprised to see his roommate was still in the room after he had sprayed his germs everywhere, and even more surprised when he pushed past the door and came closer, holding a bowl of soup.

Theo handed over the bowl with a weird expression on his face before saying, “I better go. Feel better bud.”

Liam wheezed out, “Thanks man.” But his roommate was already out the door. The younger man heard the rattle of keys and the front door being opened and closed. Only then did he look down and saw in his soup _MY BAD SORRYNOTSORRY_. It took him a moment to absorb the message before he was giggling/coughing/wheezing again. Theo was such an ass, but he cared in his own weird way.

It didn’t take long before they were passing their secret notes to each other more regularly.

A few weeks later, Theo was freaking out of over a big test coming up. His financial aid was largely dependent on him maintaining stellar grades, which was pretty hard to do when you were also working just to survive. The poor guy was hitting the books every chance he got and his boss refused to give him time off so he was barely getting any sleep.

Liam hated seeing his friend burning himself out and really wanted to cheer him up. Then a thought occurred to him. A few minutes later he was placing a bowl beside the older boy who took a few moments to even notice it when he finally pulled his nose out of his textbook to take a breath. “What’s this?” he asked as Liam nudged the bowl closer.

“If you ask me that every time I bring you a bowl of soup, I might have to stop thinking of you as ‘the smart one’ in the house,” the younger man teased.

“But I’m not sick,” Theo pointed out, as if to prove who was in fact the dumber one. But regardless, he looked down into the bowl and read _YOURE GONNA CRUSH IT MAN_. And then he was speechless, and Liam could’ve sworn he saw his roommate blush a little.

“Stressed is a kind of sick,” Liam rationalised before resting his hand on the larger man’s shoulder. The fact that Theo didn’t flinch at the touch was evidence of just how much he had come to trust his friend. He never let anyone else touch him. “So relax man. You’re brilliant, and you’re gonna do brilliant!” Liam added with a gentle squeeze before heading back to the living room to watch a movie with the volume turned way down.

A few minutes later, Theo came out of his room and placed the empty bowl in the sink, but rather than go back to studying as he normally would, he walked over to the sofa and grabbed the TV remote, turning up the volume as he flopped down next to his roommate. Liam gave him a questioning look and he simply shrugged and said, “I think I deserve a break.”

They watched the movie in silence, which was odd because Theo was usually a very vocal critic of basically everything Liam liked. When the younger man looked over to see why his friend was being so forgiving of the plebeian trash (as he called it) that was playing, he saw that Theo had fallen asleep and was leaning precariously towards Liam. When the young man shifted his weight to get up so that Theo could lie down, the movement caused the larger boy to slump into Liam’s lap.

Shocked both by the weird turn of events, and the fact that the sudden movement hadn’t woken Theo up, Liam didn’t react immediately. Instead, he took the time to examine the exhausted face turned slightly towards him as the lights from the TV played across the handsome features. Unable to help himself, Liam slowly lowered a hand to his roommate’s face and gently brushed back the hair hanging over his eyes. Those eyes, which he sometimes got lost in when Theo was lecturing him for not paying attention in class or for being way too loud with his friends when he was trying to study, now had dark rings under them.

Liam gently ran the back of his hand along Theo’s face and wished he could tell him how he felt, but he valued their friendship too much and he had never gotten the impression that the older boy was into… well boys. In fact, he didn’t seem interested in anyone. He rejected anyone who made a pass at him, and did so quite brutally. Liam certainly didn’t want to be on the receiving end of that. So instead, he would just be there for his friend, and try to make his life a little brighter.

When Liam woke up the next morning, Theo was already gone. But resting on the table was a bowl of lukewarm soup. The letters had drifted apart slightly but he could still make out the message: _YOURE SMARTER THAN YOU THINK_. Liam couldn’t stop the smile from spreading across his face, and he didn’t want to anyway.

For a couple of weeks after that, Theo seemed to be in an unusually good mood. He spent less time in his room studying, and hung out with Liam, even when Mason and Hayden were around, which was very unlike him. He smiled more, and his jokes were slightly less soul crushing than usual. Liam loved seeing that side of him, although he had only caught glimpses in the past. And the more he saw, the more he knew how he felt. And he was even starting to feel like he might be able to tell the older boy how he felt, but that feeling didn’t last long.

About a month later, Liam came home to the sound of screaming. Theo never raised his voice, ever. So the young man practically burst through the front door prepared to beat the crap out of whoever was attacking his roommate, only to find a very surprised looking Theo staring at him, mouth agape with his phone held away from his face in a white-knuckled deathgrip. He had clearly been screaming into it.

“Liam what the hell?” Theo asked with confusion and anger painted across his usually stoic face. But before he could find out what his crazy roommate was thinking, there was voice coming from the cell in his hand. Theo turned his attention back to the phone, not even listening to what was being said before barking, “I gotta go. No. NO! I can’t deal with this right now, just leave me alone!” He hung up and seemed about ready to throw the phone at the wall before he calmed himself and turned back to Liam as he slipped it into his pocket. “So… the door?” he asked at last, in a slightly strained voice.

Liam was still in shock. He had never seen Theo get so emotional. He couldn’t think about the bloody door; he wanted to know what had gotten his friend so upset, or rather who, and go give them a piece of his mind… or his fist. “What? Oh… Um sorry…” the younger man stammered. “I heard you yelling and I panicked. I’m sorry.”

Theo’s expression softened slightly. He was clearly still annoyed, not just at Liam thankfully, but something about his roommate’s explanation seemed to help him relax a little. “Yeah… That was… It was personal. Nothing you need to worry about,” the older boy said coolly. It wasn’t cruel but the ‘mind your own business’ was clearly implied. “Still, it’s good to know that if we ever get burgled, you will be there to save the day with your lacrosse stick,” Theo teased with a genuine smile.

Liam blushed as he realised he was still holding the stick over his head threateningly. He placed it behind the door and dropped his backpack on the kitchen counter. “Don’t worry, I’ll be here to protect your priceless… oh wait, you don’t have anything valuable to steal,” he teased back at his friend who just huffed in exasperation. “I guess I’ll just have to protect your virtue then,” Liam added, which got him a very steep eyebrow raise from Theo.

“And who says my virtue is still intact to be protected?” the muscular young man countered with a smirk. And the thought of Theo getting busy with someone made Liam blush, partly because he was imagining the guy he had a huge crush on naked, and partly because he was angry and jealous of whoever might have had the luck to experience what he could only dream of.

Theo just shook his head with a chuckle, but then his phone rang again and all the cheer drained from his face. He took the phone out and looked at it before rejecting the call. “I’m gonna go out for a bit,” he stated before grabbing his keys and just barely stopped himself from slamming the door on his way out.

Liam was tempted to go after him and see if there was anything he could do to help his best friend. But Theo was a deeply private person and Liam didn’t want to put any more pressure on him when he was so obviously stressed about something. Instead, he decided to show his support in another way. He had to run to store to buy some soup, since they were out, but luckily (or unluckily) Theo wasn’t back yet when he got home.

Theo returned around midnight. And even though he was almost supernaturally quiet as he entered, Liam heard him. He had stayed up waiting, worrying. He heard to the door to Theo’s room click closed softly. And a short while later he could have sworn he heard Theo crying. But that was almost impossible to imagine so he brushed it off as his sleep deprived brain playing tricks on him.

What Theo had found was a bowl of very cold soup on his bedside table, with only twenty four letters arranged in a slightly thicker broth than usual, to make sure they didn’t drift apart.

_IM HERE FOR YOU NO MATTER WHAT_

Theo was standing by the kitchen counter, with two cups of coffee in front of him, when Liam came out of his room the next morning. Pleasantly surprised, the younger man walked over and grabbed the closer cup and took a sip with an appreciative hum. Theo somehow managed to make coffee taste even better, which is why it was such a treat on the rare occasions when he made some for his roommate. “What’s the special occasion?” Liam asked cheerfully.

Theo’s smirk faltered and Liam was about to change the subject when he was cut short. “That was my mom yesterday,” the older man announced with no emotion in his voice at all. It was disconcerting, but Liam didn’t dare interrupt him. “She wants me to come home for my sister’s wedding.”

“Okay…” Liam replied tentatively. It didn’t seem like a bad thing, but he had never seen Theo so enraged, so it was obvious that he was missing something. He waited patiently as his friend seemed to be struggling with something internally.

Eventually, Theo volunteered more information. “You know my parents threw me out right?” he said, not really asking since he knew he had told Liam as much. “Well… they threw me out… cos I’m gay,” he finally added and while it was barely perceptible, he seemed to be expecting Liam to react badly to the news.

What Liam wanted to do was scream his exultation from the rooftop. The guy he had been pining over for years, who didn’t seem interested in anyone at all, was gay! But he knew that he needed to handle this delicately. Clearly, Theo’s parents had traumatised him and made him feel ashamed of his sexuality. He couldn’t simply throw himself at his friend and expect him to know how to handle it.

“I’m really sorry Theo,” Liam said after some consideration. “But you know that’s nothing to be ashamed of right? Your parents were dicks if they couldn’t see how amazing you are.”

Theo frowned slightly, as though he was surprised by this response. “I’m not sure what I know anymore. They made it very clear that they never wanted to see me again. I don’t even know how the hell they got my number. But now Tara wants me at her wedding but was worried what my parents would think. So my mom calls me and says they want me there too… so long as I don’t do anything to embarrass them,” he explained, and the pain was clear in his voice.

Liam very much wanted to meet Theo’s parents. He wanted to punch them, but more importantly, he wanted to let them know that they were the dumbest people on the planet, because they had knowingly cut out the most incredible person in the world from their lives. And even worse, they had given him reason to doubt how truly special and worthy of love he was.

“What are you gonna do?” Liam asked, half afraid to know the answer.

Theo had been resting against the kitchen counter and now his knuckles turned white as he gripped the overhang tightly. “I don’t know… I don’t know anything anymore. I’m so confused, and angry. I just… I want everything to make sense again. I’m sorry… I never wanted this part of my life to ruin our friendship,” he groaned in a forced whisper.

“Theo, I… We’ll always be friends,” Liam chickened out. He was so overwhelmed by this sudden vulnerability in Theo and he was terrified he’d inadvertently make it worse. He wasn’t good at saying the right thing, or with words in general.

Theo gave him a half-hearted smile. “Thanks Liam. You… um that means a lot to me,” he admitted with a blush. “I need to think about what I want to do,” he added a bit dejectedly. “I’ll… talk to you after class.” He put his empty coffee mug in the sink and grabbed his keys and bag before heading out the door. He paused briefly at the threshold as though he was about to say something, but then hunched his shoulders and closed the door behind him.

Liam wanted to hit himself. Theo had just opened up to him about something deeply personal, and had laid his fears bare before the one person he truly trusted in the world. And after that amazing display of courage, Liam had chickened out like a little bitch when the opportunity arose to finally tell Theo how he felt about him.

He spent the next few hours spiralling. He called Mason and Hayden and babbled incoherently at them through his phone a few times until they started rejecting his calls and texted him to ‘man the fuck up’. He wasn’t quite sure they understood what was going on but he had had so many breakdowns about his feeling for Theo that they were just going through the motions.

It was about an hour before Theo was supposed to get home from college when Liam got the idea. And he spent almost every second of that time putting his idea into action. He had to dig through every packet of letter soup in the apartment but it was worth it. When he heard the elevator chime, he took one last look at his handiwork before retreating to his bedroom. He only had so much courage, and this had used it all up.

 _I SUCK WITH WORDS BUT YOU MAKE ME WANNA SAY THE THINGS IM AFRAID TO SAY_  
ONLY AN IDIOT CANT SEE HOW INCREDIBLE YOU ARE AND IM NOT QUITE THAT DUMB  
YOURE SMART AND FUNNY AND SO DAMN HOT IT SCARES ME SOMETIMES  
BUT YOURE ALSO KIND AND HONEST EVEN THOUGH YOU PRETEND NOT TO BE  
AND NOW I KNOW WHY YOU ARE THE WAY YOU ARE AND IF ITS POSSIBLE  
I LOVE YOU EVEN MORE

_I LOVE YOU THEO_

Okay, yes, it had taken like ten packets of soup to get all the letters he needed and he had to make the soup in a casserole dish to fit everything in, but it wasn’t that weird and stalkerish…. Was it? He became less sure of that as he sat in his room, his stomach tying itself in knots as he heard the front door open and close, the footsteps across the floor of the living room and then the soft click of Theo’s door closing. And then…. nothing… and more nothing.

And just as Liam was about to scream as his heart tried to beat its way out of his chest, the sound of a door opening, and more footsteps and what sounded like the kitchen cabinets being opened and closed (which was odd), and then another door opening… but it wasn’t the door to his room.

Liam raced to his own door and opened it as he heard the front door close. He didn’t know what to do. Should he chase after Theo and try to explain? Maybe apologise? Could he pretend it was all just a really stupid joke and try to salvage their friendship? Every idea he came up with just seemed progressively more idiotic and he was paralyzed by indecision. Ultimately, he decided to just throw himself onto his bed, bury his head in his pillow and hope that some merciful spirit of the underworld would open a hellmouth and swallow him whole.

He couldn’t say for sure how long he lay there, fighting back the tears and running through all the different ways Theo could tell him he was a freak and to get out of his life. But after what seemed like a torturous eternity, he heard the front door open and close again. Part of him wanted to run outside and see if there was any chance Theo would still be willing to be friends with him, but the larger part of him was too terrified to move.

He was almost grateful when his door didn’t open. He could hear movement outside but it was muffled by the pillow he was trying to suffocate himself with. He had almost convinced himself that maybe it was all just a bad dream, that he hadn’t really just ruined the best thing in his life, when there was a soft knock at his door. Nope he was just imagining it, there was no way Theo would confront him after he dropped that L bomb on him.

But then there was another, more insistent knock. Liam cautiously dragged himself off the bed and crept towards the door. He tried to straighten up his hair so he could at least face his rejection with a modicum of dignity. Just as there was a third, really insistent knock on his door, Liam opened it. “What?” he asked, trying to seem like he didn’t care that his whole world was about to come crashing down around him. But his resolve faltered when he saw a now very uncertain Theo standing in front of him holding a small bowl almost defensively.

Neither of them spoke. They simply stared into each other’s blue eyes, each awash with a maelstrom of emotions. Confusion, fear, uncertainty, anger… and hope. Was he just imagining it? No, Theo looked… hopeful. Liam finally managed to drag his eyes away from the primal pull of that turbulent ocean and looked down at what his once best friend was holding.

In those hands, shaking hands he realised, was a bowl of soup with several letters slowly vibrating awake from each other from the tremors running down Theo’s arms. But they weren’t so far apart that he couldn’t make out what they were supposed to say. Or at least he thought he could make it out… but if it said what he thought it said, maybe he really had gone crazy with worry.

 _L                          T_  
I                      E                         O  
           O              U      
                    V                   O

Liam looked back up at Theo, who now had a really timid smile that just looked so out of place on his usually cocky as shit face. “You… you do…?” the younger man stammered, still not quite sure that he hadn’t cried himself to sleep and this wasn’t all just a dream.

Theo nodded and his smile got a little bigger, a little more hopeful.

“WHAT THE HELL THEO!?!” Liam exploded and Theo suddenly looked he just stepped on a landmine. “Where the hell did you go? Why did you just leave me here? Do you have any idea how I felt when you just left without a word?” he bombarded the older boy without taking a breath or letting him get a word in.

When Liam stopped to take a breath, Theo just cracked one of his shit-eating grins and stated rather matter-of-factly, “Someone finished all the soup, so I had to go get more.”

Liam’s jaw dropped at how ridiculous yet somehow totally logical that statement was, and Theo took the opportunity to step forward and press his lips to his best-friend turned boyfriend’s lips. Whatever Liam was about to shout was lost in a series of moans as he grasped at Theo’s shirt and pulled him closer.

Apparently there was something more delicious than Theo’s coffee, and Liam couldn’t wait to wake up to it every morning…


End file.
